Pages

Saturday, August 11, 2007

BBD#3, Sourdough Rye Bread is a new challenge in baking bread. Here is a sourdough rye from Provence, Pain de Seigle Sisteron, or Sisteron Rye Bread. Makes two loaves.

Take a one pound lump of dough from a previous baking of white bread, known as a chef, and put it in a bowl with 2 cups of warm water [this chef contributes the sourness that we associate with rye bread]. Squish the dough ball between your fingers until mostly dissolved in the water. Add 1 package of yeast, 1 tablespoon salt, 4 cups stone ground rye flour; stir with a heavy wooden spoon until the dough is no longer sticky. Be patient--it will take quite a few turns of the spoon. Sprinkle one hand full of white flour onto bread board and dump rye dough onto the board; knead the white flour in and pat the dough into a round ball. Place in a greased bowl, cover and let rise until double in bulk.

When double, punch down and allow to rise again.

Shape dough into two flattened disks. Place on baking sheet or pan which has been greased and sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover. Allow to double in bulk once more.

Slash a circle on the middle of each loaf.

Bake at 380F for 45 minutes.

Cook's Note: As you can see from the picture, I did not have a razor blade or baker's lame (razor blade in a tool). I used a knife tip to slash a circle in my bread top after it had risen and just as it went into the oven [this caused it to deflate and didn't give it a chance to raise again]. I think I would have been better off to slash it when first shaped for the last rising--this would have allowed the circle on top to raise somewhat independently--and I think the loaf would have been prettier and would have looked more like the original loaves.

Rye bread is better eaten the next day and the day after that … The flavor increases with age. This bread is amazing!

Recipe: The Breads of France and how to bake them in your own kitchen, Bernard Clayton, Jr.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Most of us do not have access to stills today. I suggest pouring measured boiling water over your petals and spices in a glass jug. Cover and allow to cool. Add your cooled sugar syrup and stir; and spirits and stir again. Cover and allow to steep for several weeks. Filter and bottle; store in a cool place for several more weeks before drinking. You may leave out the carmine, but as a result, your liqueur will be only slightly pink.

Rossoli: You will take musk roses, Spanish Jasmine, orange flowers [four ounces each], cinnamon [one half ounce] & [12] cloves [if clove is too strong for you, use common garden pinks flowers {œillet}, again four ounces]. When you choose well, according to what we said, you will put the whole in the Still, according to quantities' prescribed in the receipt, with [four pints] water, & will distil these matters with simple water, on a medium fire; when this receipt is distilled, you will dissolve sugar [two and three-quarters pounds] in this distillation, & when it is molten, you will pour into this distilled syrup [one bottle] brandy, or the spirit of wine [marc], according to quality or the force [proof] which you will want to give to your liquor; this being made, you will colour your liquor a crimson red [cochinille or carmine]. [Filter and bottle; store in a cool place for several weeks before drinking.]

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Hypocras can be a refreshing drink over ice in the summer, or when heated in winter will warm the soul.

Take two pints good wine, put it into a non-reactive pot that will not cause an off-taste. Add one and one half pounds sugar or brown sugar, a little cinnamon, ginger the size of a hazel nut, two seed strands of long pepper, twelve cloves, nutmeg flower or two blades of mace, a Cox's orange pippin peeled & cut in round slices; let the whole soak approximately half an hour, covered. Then half-crush a dozen sweet almonds in a mortar with a little sugar, & add a little orange flower water. At this point if you want to add two amber grains & one musk grain, crush your amber & musk with the almonds and sugar, & place crushed nuts, sugar and flavorings into a cotton straining bag [jelly bag or cotton lined filter], & pour hypocras back forth over the grains and crushed nuts – from one pot to another; if you want to keep it more than eight days use lemon instead of apple.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Today, August 1st, a cross-quarter day known also as Lammas, carts wheel past my house loaded with grain for the granary. Since the grain is being harvested, now is the perfect time for bread baking. Flour ground today shouldn’t have to be sifted to remove weevils before adding to the sponge or levain to create loaves.

Bread: it is prepared in every village, that is to say wheat, or rye, or of a mixture of both, [into a] tiny well in the flour, one kneads in a little hot water, also putting in a little salt & the leaven, to cause it to rise by fermentation, a kind of homemade bread, lighter and skillfully made, artisanal without their [professional baker’s] help. It is the food of the common man, wholesome, very nutritious, & that which is appropriate for him, in all the states which one can suppose.

Explore with me 18thC French cuisine as a habitante in Nouvelle France may have cooked. After the F&I War, and again after the Revolutionary War, habitantes were surrounded and overrun by Anglo and other American influences. By the end of the 18thC, new foods and new methods of cooking would change her culture forever.